I received a strange email from Single Malt TV. It seems that the film coverage of the Bourbon Festival was so popular that it increased band volume by 800% so they are dropping all of the coverage of bourbon. Evidently they have not found a bourbon distiller to pay them what they thought they should get so they are dropping all the bourbon storiesfrom their comcast. What do you think of this development? Are you guilty of making bourbon stories too popular on Single Malt TV?

Here is the email:Good Morning,A Note from Visionmill Productions (Singlemalt TV) I am contacting you as President/CEO of Visionmill Productions to inform you that Singlemalt TV will be removing all bourbon-based content effective today. This includes distillery profiles and tasting videos, coverage of the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, Urban Bourbon Trail, Bourbon Chase and all related videos.

Our bourbon coverage has been received with phenomenal global interest and a massive increase in our viewership. However our soaring audience and increasing video views have raised our bandwidth costs by nearly 800 percent. Coupled with that is the demand from our viewers for more content.

Without generating revenue to support these costs it is impossible for Singlemalt TV to continue running our bourbon programming. We had hoped the quality of our programming, extent of coverage and interaction with our global audience may have elicited some support from the bourbon and related industries. Unfortunately, following numerous efforts to attract advertisers and partner with the industry it has become clear this is not possible and we have to remove all bourbon related content for our operation to continue.

We profoundly regret this decision but the popularity of the bourbon coverage has forced us to take action in the interest of cost effectiveness.

I have to say this is a bit odd. I can understand that with the increase in visitors to their site for the bourbon related articles their bandwidth will increase and with that their cost increases. But just because they could not secure funding for advertising from the bourbon industry could they not sell advertising space to another sponsor to cover cost. If the increase is as big as stated then they should have no trouble finding advertisers. I am assuming that with the sponsorship they were seeking is in return for advertising space.

gents... all businesses are in to make money... if you have something that is popular, but costing you money, you have to find a way to fix that... shutting it down was not the best or only option... they could have had a premium section and charged a modest fee for entry... their marketing guy should be fired, but I can understant their problem... just not their solution....

Em,I agree with you. It does seem to be a case where they are shooting themself in the foot. I would think the extra numbers would make them even more attractive to their present sponsors and getting rid of those extra numbers would make their sponsors question their business sense. I would think that taking that extra high amount of viewers to any advertiser would make them more appealing than their normal viewer numbers.

The essence of their email makes me think they were trying to blackmail the distilleries into sponsorship and I can not say I blame the distilleries for telling to take a hike.

SMTV's business model has never made sense to me so even if I had the means to make that kind of investment (which I don't), I certainly wouldn't follow their model. I'm surprised that they do--or feel they do--get enough financial support from the SMS marketers to support that coverage.

My immediate reaction to the email posted above was "F**k them!," followed by a laugh. A bunch of arrogant assholes, me thinks. Who needs them?

I have cable internet that delivers download speeds of 3.06 Mbit/s but their video feeds take so much bandwidth I can't stream them. F**k that! I'm told that SMTV's core audience is Wall Street types who have significantly faster connections at their offices than virtually anyone has from cable or DSL.

The idea that you would provide programming, find it to be popular, be unable to find a way to profit from it, and drop it in a fit of pique, blaming it on prospective advertisers WHO ARE THE SAME COMPANIES THAT OWN THE SMS BRANDS, tells me this is a company run by people with the mentality of spoiled children. Good riddance.

All of that said, is it possible, Mike, that the email you received is some kind of hoax? Did you sign up to be on their mailing list? Did anyone else get it? The email said "effective today," but two days later all of the bourbon material, including the Bourbon Festival coverage, is still there and there is nothing on any of their text pages about it being discontinued. So, not only strange, but suspicious.

Chuck,I know Drew Kulsveen also received it. I am assuming that they sent it to me because they came to the Filson and filmed my first Bourbon Academy class. That is how they had my email address. If it is still on the air then I must assume they had a change of heart. Or maybe the email worked and they blackmailed one of the distillers to give them some money. In either case, I have to agree with your statements here about the whole affair.

Unbelievably it makes business sense - sort of. One of my favorite magazines that was very popular stopped publication some years back. I recently had a long talk with the editor and he explained it like this.The publication had a lot of subscribers. The amount of $ from subscriptions didn't cover all the production and mailing cost. The downturn caused advertising to be way way off so that revenue stream was about dried up. With less $ coming from advertising they were going to loose money by servicing all the subscriptions and maintaining the staff and production facilities. So the big dogs in the corner offices closed down the magazine. Unbelievably it' was the magazines popularity that killed it.If you look at bandwidth as the net equivalent of printing and production then the statement makes sense. If none of the Bourbon marketers (I think the term is more appropriate than distillers) can see the potential and step up with a suitable advertising budget then the provider needs to shut off the tap to keep their costs in line.This email underlines Bourbons emerging and continued popularity and does indeed point to an opportunity - but only if appropriate funding can be sourced. The difficulty in obtaining that funding on shortish notice can often be the way ad agencies allocate their yearly budgets. If buying a lot of time on something isn't in a pre approved budget item it won't happen this fiscal - and only next if all the necessary listener numbers documentation is vetted.

Steve,You make some interesting points. I do understand the extra costs and such, I just thought that Single Malt TV went about this in a very strange way. The letter almost sounds like an extortion letter more than a plea for sponsors. Chuck also made some very valid points but the most telling is that some of the brands that do sponsor SMTV also have bourbons in their portfolio. This letter may hack off some of their present sponsors as well as potential sponsors.

Your right Mike, the letter sounds un-professional and juvenile. When they next approach the spirits marketers perhaps something like "sorry about that, the fellow who wrote that is no longer with us" will turn the page for them. There is clearly an opportunity here for both of them and I'm sure it will sort itself out - there is money to be made so cooler heads will prevail.